Alleged Cambridge gunman was released from psychiatric hospital 3 days before shooting

The alleged gunman charged in Monday's chaotic shooting on Memorial Drive in Cambridge that left two people seriously wounded had been released from a psychiatric hospital three days earlier, according to a state police report on the incident.

Less than an hour before the shootings, Tyler E. Brown allegedly told his parole officer that “these people are gonna f---ing pay.” He did not say whom he was targeting, but would go on to fire at least 60 rounds erratically into cars and at passersby, according to the police report filed in Cambridge District Court.

The Middlesex County District Attorney's office has charged Brown, 46, with armed assault with intent to murder, carrying a firearm without a license and possessing a large-capacity firearm. He was in a local hospital Tuesday and no arraignment date has been set.

Brown has a history of violence. He previously served time in prison for shooting at Boston police officers in 2020 while already on probation for a 2014 conviction for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

He was released from prison in May last year, to serve the remainder of his sentence under parole supervision, according to the Department of Correction.

On Monday, less than two hours before the shooting, a parole officer flagged to police that Brown was at risk of violence again. The parole officer called the Boston Police Department, reporting that Brown, “a known crack cocaine user, had relapsed and was ready to end his life,” according to the report.

Brown allegedly shot at several people, including two men who are now hospitalized with life-threatening injuries, according to Middlesex DA Marian Ryan. They include an MBTA driver and a man who was identified as a DoorDash driver by a family member at the scene to WBUR.

The shooting came to an end when Brown was confronted by a state police trooper and a former Marine who was in legal possession of a firearm. Brown was shot several times "in his extremities," according to the police report.

Court records show that a public defender will represent Brown, but the name of a lawyer has not yet been released.

On Monday morning, a man who lived in the same rooming house as Brown told a parole officer that Brown had been drinking and getting high the night before and was “off his rocker.” Just three days prior to the shooting, Brown had been released from McLean psychiatric hospital, according to the police report.

The parole officer reported reaching Brown on a FaceTime video call at 12:08 p.m., and saw him waving a semi-automatic rifle inside a kitchen. How he got the gun, and whether parole officers knew he had it prior to Monday’s shooting, is unclear.

Brown, who had a drug screen test scheduled for later that day, allegedly said “I’m not going back to prison” and claimed on the call he’d committed murders in the past, “some that he did not get caught for,” according to the report.

The parole officer took a screenshot of Brown to send to police and Brown ended the call. The parole officer then began driving to Brown’s residence but didn’t find him there.

“At some point,” the report says, Brown called the parole officer again and said he was no longer Tyler Brown, and was “now repping his ‘shooter name.'"

Over the next 73 minutes, Boston police obtained a search warrant to find Brown through the location of his cellphone. The U.S. Secret Service provided a 1,000-meter radius in Cambridge. The DA said Boston police called Cambridge police at about 1:06 p.m.  

Then, the parole department obtained a second warrant that put Brown within 100 meters of 51 Kelly Rd. in Cambridge at 1:21 p.m.

The first shots were reported at 808 Memorial Dr., less than a half mile away, around 1:30 p.m.

Officers soon found Brown walking down Memorial Drive as a terrifying scene unfolded. One driver reported she felt a round whiz past her jacket before passing through her front windshield. Nearby, gas station workers hid. Residents of the Rivermark Apartment buildings watched — some filming video — from balconies above.

“I’m trying to duck for cover because the way he started shooting,” Cambridge resident Seven Sparks said. He said he was just taking a walk through his neighborhood when he heard the first shots ring out. “Some of the bullets were hitting this gas station.”

He described seeing the shooter wave a gun in the air while screaming something unintelligible. Sparks then ducked into an alley by a Mobil station and said he could see the driver of a black sedan, who’d crashed into a rock amid the shooting, bloodied in the front seat of his car.

Brown was ultimately brought down by State Trooper Landon Veney and an ex-Marine, who has not been identified. The ex-Marine, previously a firearms instructor, was driving south on Memorial Drive at the time and had a 9mm Glock handgun in a safe in the backseat of his car, according to the state police report. He fired eight rounds after seeing Brown open fire on Veney.

Video shot by neighbors shows Brown falling to the ground after he was struck, according to the police report, and then throwing the gun as he lay on his back.

When Brown was sentenced to state prison in 2021 for opening fire on Boston Police officers, then-Suffolk County DA Rachael Rollins decried the sentence of five to six years; her office had asked the judge for 10 to 12 years.

After Monday's shooting on Memorial Drive, the Boston Police Patrolmen's Union posted on X that the 2020 sentence was a "ball drop."

“The fact that the judicial system thought it prudent to show leniency to a wannabe cop killer 5-years ago is not only the definition of insanity but an undeniable insult to those who put their lives on the line everyday," the post said.